Image sensors often suffer a trade-off between the size of the image sensor and the number of items that can be placed on the image sensor. For example, larger sensor parts may be used to acquire more light, or to allow more control structure to be placed on the sensor substrate. It is often desirable to maximize the amount of circuitry that can be placed on a sensor.
Microlenses may often be placed on image sensor pixels. A conventional sensor may have the structure shown in FIG. 1. A planarization layer 100 covers the pixels 105, which may be image sensor pixels. Each microlens 110 is separated from an adjacent microlens 120 by a gap 112. The gap needs to have a specified size, e.g. one xe2x80x9cdesign rulexe2x80x9d wide. The presence of the gap may reduce the effective fill factor of the image sensor. These gaps between the lenses may be necessary to shape the lenses into their lens-like shape during the lens fabrication process. However, these gaps may lose certain real estate on the image sensor, and hence may affect the xe2x80x9cfill factorxe2x80x9d.
The present application teaches a way of forming spacing elements between gaps between lenses in an image sensor device. By doing this, the spacing between elements may be reduced.